Skip Article Header. Skip to: Start of Article. James Hamilton on his boat, Dirona, docked at the Wakiki Yacht Club in Honolulu, Hawaii. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Wired James Hamilton On a rainy Monday in August 2011, a 10-million-watt transformer exploded in northern Virginia, sending an enormous voltage spike across the power grid. The surge hit an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, knocking o
![Why Amazon Hired a Car Mechanic to Run Its Cloud Empire](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/4f165c6a9995007ec1e2a74384315736c3a4010e/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fimages_blogs%2Fwiredenterprise%2F2014%2F02%2Famazon-2.jpg)